Chris Jordan's Guilty Art

By jjacquet on May 6, 2009.

Check out this work by Chris Jordan that helps us visualize quantitative information using photography. His series, called Running the Numbers II, is a commentary on global mass culture, is now showing at the Winsor Gallery in Vancouver.

This new series looks at mass phenomena that occur on a global scale. Similarly to the first Running the Numbers series, each image portrays a specific quantity of something: the number of tuna fished from the world's oceans every fifteen minutes, for example. But this time the statistics are global in scale, rather than specifically American.

One work is made up of a series of watercolor paintings and depicts 20,500 tuna--the average number of tuna fished from the world's oceans every fifteen minutes:

i-c0caf245d7b912efe57b2c0689086b64-cjordantuna.jpg

I like these works conceptually (and find them heavy on guilt) and hope to inquire as to the profiles of the buyers of his work...

Tags
Stylized Substance

More like this

What We Waste: A View of Consumption
Artists Chris Jordan, from Seattle, has a fascinating series of images making "contemporary American culture" more visible. It's called "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait." The series will be on display at New York's Von Lintel Gallery starting mid-June. A student of mine sent me the…
Chris Jordan: Impossible Numbers
Year of the Tiger, 2010 Chris Jordan Depicts 3200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth. The space in the middle would hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970. SEED has put together a slideshow of works by Chris Jordan, an artist I…
New Art Gallery Opens inside Engineering School
"Amaryllis," by Katelyn Sack I work in the engineering school here at U.Va. My office faces a lobby-type area just outside the main computer lab for undergrads. That space has blank walls. We recently commandeered it and opened up an art gallery. The painting above is one of four currently…
Can simulations replace animal testing? Alas, no.
My good friend and blogfather, Orac, posted something yesterday about animal testing in medical laboratories. I've been meaning to write something about that for a while; now seems like a good time. I'm not someone who thinks that being cruel to animals is no big deal. I have known some people…

Chris Jordan gave a talk about Running the Numbers I in my home town last summer, and also showed the sharks image from his new series. It was fascinating to hear him describe the elaborate (and tedious) processes he uses to generate the final images. He also explained how his art has influenced his behavior, in particular his refusal to drink beverages out of disposable containers such as plastic bottles or aluminum cans. Since he flies around a lot to give presentations as a Smithsonian Ambassador, he mentioned that his photograph of jet contrails, which illustrates the number of commercial flights across the US, makes him feel guilty.

... I'm definitely feeling guilty for the cans of tuna in my pantry. Beautiful art though.